The Deceit

42

The police arrived at the same time as the ambulance. Within ten minutes of Karen’s phone calls, Chancery Lane was chock-full, from end to end, with police cars. Officers were streaming into the building, down the stairs and into the basements.

Karen’s boss, CS Boyle, came straight over to her. She was sitting on the pavement, Eleanor’s body in her lap. Stiff, cold, wrapped in the tartan rug.

‘Jesus, Karen.’ He sat down beside her, on the cold wet pavement. ‘I don’t — I just — I don’t know what to say.’

Karen said nothing. She hoped he wouldn’t cry. If he started crying she would cry again: she had already wept for untold minutes, before summoning what was left of her senses and ringing for assistance, drawing half the police officers in central London to 102 Chancery Lane. Half the cops, and one big ambulance.

The paramedics approached her cautiously. They had a stretcher. The young ambulancemen were in green hospital uniforms and they leaned forward to take Eleanor’s body.

‘No,’ said Karen. ‘No.’

‘Karen …’ CS Boyle put a hand on her shoulder, speaking very gently. ‘Come on. They have to. It’s their job. They need to … You know what needs to happen.’

‘They don’t have to pronounce her dead.’ Karen snapped the words. ‘I already know that she’s dead.’

‘Please, Karen, let them take her … Please. You can go in the ambulance, I’ll come with you.’

‘No. No! I’ll go on my own.’ She stared at Boyle, his kind fatherly face, his now-polished buttons. She wanted to hug him and she wanted to punch him, punch her dead father, punch someone. She was alone now. No mother no father no child. As solitary as a human could be. The cold winter rain was falling ever heavier.

‘Miss Trevithick?’

Reluctantly, hatefully, grievously, Karen acceded: she lifted up the heavy bundle, the rug that contained her daughter’s body; and the paramedics stooped and took Eleanor’s body and put it on the stretcher. Karen followed them into the ambulance. The last thing she saw as they shut the ambulance doors was Boyle sliding through the wire door, entering the scene of crime. Where her daughter had been killed, or left for dead. Or whatever had happened. What did it matter? Nothing mattered any more.

The ambulance driver put the siren on, but it was only for show.

St Bart’s was the nearest hospital. Grand old St Bart’s, by Smithfield Market. The staff were kind and efficient: the doctor who pronounced Eleanor dead smiled in the saddest way imaginable, trying to be empathetic. The same doctor found bird feathers in Eleanor’s mouth, and said she had probably been asphyxiated. So that was how Rothley had done it. He had put those little dead birds in her mouth until she choked.

Karen smothered her grief. She sat and stared at her fingers. Then she put a finger in her mouth — the knuckle of her index finger — and bit down. She wanted to hurt herself, to obscure the mental pain with physical pain. She closed her eyes and bit and bit hard, until the blood began to run from her knuckle and she tasted iron and she opened her eyes to see a doctor, in his white coat, staring at her, perplexed.

Karen trembled, and cried. The doctor came over and called for a nurse and the blood was wiped away. The same doctor offered Karen medication: a bottle of benzos for the grief. Rohypnol. Anything. She refused.

For several hours she stayed in St Bart’s by her dead daughter’s silent bedside. Quite, quite numb. Her finger hurt where she had bitten into the flesh. This was welcome. The pain was good. Nothing mattered. She wondered desolately when they would take Eleanor to the morgue. Or would they do the postmortem in here?

At midnight she could bear it no longer. The silence, the silence of her daughter not breathing at midnight. She called Julie and was told they still had no news of Alan. And then she cut Julie off before she asked too much about Eleanor, and left the hospital. She took the Tube home, walked into her own flat and she sat on the sofa and stared at a switched-off TV.

The flat was so quiet. Hushed. Prayerful. Pin-drop and penitent. The silence had followed her from the hospital. All would be silent, now. Karen looked at the silent ceiling and then back at the silent TV. She realized she hadn’t eaten in a day. But what did it matter? Why buy food just for herself? Why bother with anything if it was just for herself?

There were sharp knives in the kitchen. Very sharp knives. Karen gazed at her own wrists. Then she remembered the vodka in the kitchen cupboard. And all the many sleeping pills in her bedroom. Twenty would be enough.